the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

THE HASHEESH EATER
for the action of a drama; the last left me in complete
ignorance of any point far enough back in the past to date the
commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation might have
occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held me
when I heard it begun.
And now, with time, space expanded also. At my friend's
house one particular arm-chair was always reserved for me. I
was sitting in it at a distance of hardly three feet from the
centre table around which the members of the family were
grouped. Rapidly that distance widened. The whole
atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great
spaces surrounding me on every side. We were in a vast hall,
of which my friends and I occupied opposite extremities. The
ceiling and the walls ran upward with a gliding motion as if
vivified by a sudden force of resistless growth.
Oh! I could not bear it. I should soon be left alone in the
midst of an infinity of space. And now more and more every
moment increased the conviction that I was watched. I did
not know then, as I learned afterward, that suspicion of all
earthly things and persons was the characteristic of the
hasheesh delirium.
In the midst of my complicated hallucination, I could
perceive that I had a dual existence. One portion of me was
whirled unresistingly along the track of this tremendous
experience, the other sat looking down fro a height upon its
double, observing, reasoning, and serenely weighting all the
phenomena. This calmer being suffered with the other by
sympathy, but did not lose its self-possession.
The servant had not come.
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